


The Bloody Quartet

by luna65



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood and Violence, Changing Tenses, Dark Fantasy, Fetish, Multi, Sexual Content, Supernatural Elements, character tropes, dark and cynical
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-24 08:20:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 9,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17097176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luna65/pseuds/luna65
Summary: Fantasy AU - a series of vignettes wherein I imagine the members of Queen as defined by their most obvious characteristics, only far most monstrous.





	1. Prelude: the legend of a myth

**Author's Note:**

> This idea came to me while I was working on another story and wouldn't leave me alone. It's total fantasy and so Our Band are demonic vampire incubi as a metaphor for fame and infamy, a commentary on our regard for them; it's rather dark and violent, sensual, cynical and sardonic. As a general warning if you're not into the really dark stuff then you probably shouldn't read this. The prose is very stylized, which lends a particular effect (or so I'd like to believe, anyway).
> 
> Each vignette will be centered upon a member of Queen (although some of them will feature some or all of the band).

There is life in this city. There is also death. And then there is Death, which wears several faces.

This city has endured thousands of years with multitudes of beings walking the streets, residing within various edifices, whispering in the ears of its’ citizenry. Shadows, and the shadows of shadows. Dust, and flesh, and the objects of artifice and ambition speaking to us from long aeons, speaking **to** us as if the ones who wrought them still abided.

All dead...but for some death is not a terminus. Passed by and passed on.

Death, it moves among us and it distracts us with such efforts.

No one knows from whence the demons originated, save that their hunger for our appetites brought them here, pulled them to us. They walk the streets and they sing to us and those they inhabit are gifted with the immortality their own efforts aspire to.

But there is a price for everything. _What are **you** paying?_

Whatever they may have paid to be feted and honored and worshipped, they pay an additional toll, and that is Death.

Whatever beauty you see, know that it is only illusion, for that which you love is dead inside and their song only echoes.

But such beauty, it moves and beseeches us all; we desire to know the legend and when presented with the myth, conflate and confuse until it becomes one long clamouring discourse. Charming and enthralling even so, we open ourselves to the demons and their hunger.

Death deals death. Illusion begets disillusion.

There are four, and they desired to be immortal. To occupy the liminal spaces of dreams and aspirations and passions. Their magic wrought upon this city, ancient and innumerable, to fulfill their lust for the souls of others, enchanted by their efforts.

They come to you, as demons do, with just the slightest of suggestions, until their voices are all you can hear. Until their faces are all you can see. Until their touch and their taste and their scent is all you can yearn to know. Until you swoon and pine and sigh. They possess every part of you until there is no other thought, no other desire.

Until you crave some other life, some other world, long-dead.

Then they rush in, and drink from you.

Blood is not the only lustrous engine for the will to take and make and break, but it is of primary importance.

Blood oils this world, blood makes the bargains, but other things will do.

Death deals death, but Death may also toy with you awhile.

Who hasn’t lounged supine, lost in sound, dying to know the moment of grace which produced such a hallowed work of art. The _feeling_ of it, like leaving the ground, taken up in the arms of one who is blessed by whatever gods one recognizes. Or none at all. How it is so like love, and lust, and agony, and the giddy laughter of euphoria.

You feel them, their echoes and shadows, come through Time to hold you in their gaze.  
Amber, forest, azure, lichen.

They have you now, they will have you always.

And if you reside in this city, one night they will come to you. Singularly, or in unison. And they will have you to the full, take all which you offer them, in wrenching violent actuality.

Their song will inhabit your blood, or your blood will be imbibed by their questing tongues, these same tongues which speak of love and madness and discovery and conflict.

You will meet Death and perhaps you were waiting all along. You are willing to know it, whichever face it wears. But they are not who you _think_ they are, even as you believe you are informed by dead words in dead books and upon sterile screens. So many long years gone it no longer matters what is true and what is real and what is fact.

Whispers in the wind, echoes down a corridor, the feeling of loss one experiences at dusk.

But they are also exactly who you _believe_ they are. 

They are dead, what they were is dead to the waking world. Never forget this. But we won’t allow them to die. And so they come to us and we invite them inside.


	2. Flamboyant Fop

He awakens, as is his custom, in a sumptuous chamber. The light is fading, the sky streaked with purple and crimson.

His bed, magnificent in its’ size, cradles him and two admirers. One of them is several heartbeats away from being deceased. But ah, there is an expression which might occupy an intersection of terror and ecstasy. It’s so difficult to tell in this half-light. The victim is past knowing and past caring.

The headboard of the bed, a solid piece of rosewood, features a carving with vines bearing flowers and thorns alike. Fae are also disguised within, until one views it in a certain light and their faces come to the fore, their eyes shining. The artifice is so particularly skilled one feels that pressure against the back of the neck, the feeling of being watched and hungered for.

The bed is flanked by two marble-topped endtables, _Nero Marquina_ , dense black with delicate veins of silver. The floors are also marble, though of a different color.

He need not worry about disguising the blood which is spilled there, but it offends his sense of aesthetic to actually view the result of his appetites. He has a brace of servants - some willing, some compelled, some crazed with fear - to ensure he moves through a space pleasing to his taste. To see what he wants to see.

He is renowned for his taste and style, and his quarters are crammed with a conquering connoisseur’s bounty of ancient and treasured objects. A museum piece, this place, just as he is.

As twilight deepens to velvety blue-black spangled with the glint of dead stars, dead worlds, dead possibilities, we view him seated before his glass, examining every minute flaw in an otherwise bewitching face. Those expressive eyes, that over-generous mouth, the pleasing lines of jaw and nose and cheekbones. He looks to an ancient photograph upon the wall next to the mirror, _Prima Vamp_ that she was, Theda Bara posing with a skeleton - the remains of a satisfied suitor, one supposes.

 _Do I possess a fraction of your virulent allure, Theodosia?_ he inquires without sound. She is also dead, you see. She remains, as always, non-committal.

 _And why indeed should I not take what **I** see?_

Doesn’t he give them something in return with his glorious pantomime, which age after age continued to obsess and impress? They flocked to it, my darlings, oh how they did indeed. Those not so impressed called him the Flamboyant Fop: his costumes ridiculous, his gestures overwrought, his songs bombastic and melodramatic.

The price was high, my pretties: a vial of your most precious liquid to be surrendered and consumed by those who entertained you. This would allow them access to your thoughts, your dreams, your internal monologues. They would listen, they would whisper, they would seduce within your most sacred space.

An ivory dressing gown lavishly embroidered with marigolds draped his lithe frame and he moved as if he were already within the pantomime from his dressing table to his tub.

He had no use (and neither did his compatriots) for such prosaic functions as bathing, but he enjoyed the action as he had in life. The water was steaming and pearlescent with scented bath salts, a cloud of bergamot greeting his arrival. He submerged and scrubbed the blood out from under his fingernails, taking his time and musing on the excellent flavor of those he had drunk from during the previous night.

A scream rang out. High-pitched and horrified, and he shivered at the waves of revulsion carried to him through the air, psychic distress could be just as delicious if not actually sustaining.

He awaited the rapid steps of a servant, for someone to arrive and deal with the situation. All this one could do was scream. Generally they attempted to flee, only to meet a locked ironwood door. How he loved that door.

How he loved to watch them fling themselves against it, with screams and cries, agony warping their pretty faces. He would laugh at their attempts. The best of them would then fall at his feet, begging for mercy.

And he might, he just might, grant them a boon. Divest them of their waking nightmare with the power of incubi sorcery and leave them limp, their next waking somewhere else, away from his presence but not his influence.

Finally the din was too much for his refined sensibilities. He climbed out of the tub and with a firm step (this dead ensorcelled flesh never slipped, you see) strode back into the bedroom and took the poor boy in hand.

“Darling, please, it is far too late for such histrionics!”

The wailing, then, the pleas and the rebukes, it was _ridiculous_.

“You know what I am, don’t you?” he asked, and the boy nodded, still gibbering. Such a pretty boy, those wide dark blue eyes and that hair as dark as his own with a charming curl to it. Such an exquisitely carved face.

“So hush now, dear thing.”

But no, the mania could not be controlled. And so with a swift motion he broke the neck of this plaything - _Crack!_ \- and the body thudded to the floor, the cacophony ceased.

The other now-dead body sprawled in the bed was also blessedly quiet.

“I don’t _enjoy_ having to kill you,” he murmured to them both. “I truly don’t.”

He lied many times an evening, did this incarnation of the god Mercury, and so it might have been the first of this particular observance, a night in which he planned to visit his compatriots and rally them for another portrayal of their eternal masque. They would be difficult, of course, because they _always_ were. In life and in death.

“Oh why do I dissemble?” he asked the other, a somewhat more swarthy and equally beautiful boy, given to a certain theatricality of attire and appearance. “I will destroy you and wipe the floor with your mewling remains, drain you and tear you apart. And why? Because I can. Because **I am**.”

Bliss...bliss always came first, my darlings. The pretty words, the pretty lies, the kisses and the sighs. The lust and the utter satiety he could bestow upon those he chose. Romance, certainly, but never forget what it is you fuck.

“Don’t misunderstand,” he cautioned them, and whoever else he had in mind. “Misunderstandings, they’re such cheap and banal devices for drama.”

He was Death. Monsters are real, and they **will** eat you. The dead recall nothing of Love.

Sounds of trembling jingling keys in the lock and then the door flew open, the body on the floor twitched from its’ impact.

“What in the Ten Hells took you so long?!” he demanded of the servants before him.


	3. Misery loves Curiosity

The tower was a choice - the choice to attempt to live apart from the rabble. But he could not escape the city, not entirely. He sensed that his time to wander was now at an end.

When he led a would-be maiden up the steps, the staircase which wound around and around, up and up, closer to that limit which bled into the oblivion he stared into every night, it was a test. Some might only get so far and then flee, crying, the quick click of their steps a tarantella of fear. Some might cry but still allow themselves to be led, the fear oozing from their skin, a slick oily sharpness he wanted to lick away to revel in the acrid shame of it. Some might tremble against him as he patiently led them ever upward, his voice calm and warm, his words reassuring and affectionate.

“They fall in love with you, and you with them,” his cherub compatriot once noted. “How very tiresome to wallow in the aftermath of such foolishness.”

His hunger, his specific hunger, was for abandon, to watch someone lose themselves in overwhelming obsession for him. To cling to him as if the world would seek to wrench them apart in its’ terrible indifference for their emotions. He had quested in both life and death to bestow an intensity to relationships, even as all of them passed beyond him. Now immortal, he was hardened like a fossil within his ambition and achievements. Unchanging in every aspect.

But those he loved, his last duchesses, nothing but husks remained. His hunger had consumed them. So many lost to a forever which eks out grain by grain, star by star, unspiraling across this dark density of which we know not its’ substance.

And what of his compatriots, equally immortal, but the knowledge they had of each other is occluded now, much as a totality once illustrated to him how the Universe aligned in this miniscule space to which we are assigned.

The limitless void, the big empty...oh, don’t get him started.

No, better still to accompany this knight to the tower, so that he may love you and love you and love you until you are exhausted and willing to swear your life to him always.

His love is as the warmest softest velvet to be swaddled in, full of lovely phrases and promises numerous as the worlds we cannot reach and will never know. As the light comes on the hollowness of those words, the sham of those promises is revealed, much as the lines in his face and the tremble in his voice. The color drains out of everything until you find you are also fading.

It’s never never **ever** enough, to fill the abyss of need within him.

And yet so easy to love, so easy to admire, so easy to trust.

When he was newly immortal he charmed a siren right out of the sea. The depth of his magic, this is a power few seem to recognize.

Those he does not consume, they are tucked into his cozy bower and he reads to them of other worlds, other wonders. He smiles the most reassuring smile and kisses them so sweetly. 

He asks but one thing: “When you wake if you don’t find me here, please stay put for I shall find you.”

It is his only request.

When the light returns he must be alone, to weep once more over all he has lost.

Those who honor his request, he rewards them with kisses deep and nourishing and they feel the golden heat of his desire pouring forth, and they are fulfilled beyond articulation. He takes as little as he can the second time so that they may return to waking life. He may visit them again, those fortunate ones, and they will yearn for him evermore.

You see them, from time to time, at their windows looking up at all those dead stars.

Those who disobey, they open every door, for none of the doors are locked. Behind every door is the shell of a woman he cannot abandon. He weeps for them all when the light reclaims the city. They abide with him, and they are past accusations, past anger and recriminations, past love and lust and disgust. But he cannot let them go. They each lie within a golden box and he has seen to it that they are just as lovely as they were in life.

But he believes in fairy tales and views his surroundings with enchanted eyes. With his deep forest eyes which invite you to explore the wilderness within him. _Come now, sweet lady, come find me._

Those who disobey, they have been thrown down from the tower, eyes vacant, limbs akimbo, drained of everything they wanted to give him. Those who disobey, they find the princesses and the fae and the sirens and every enchanted being who loved him deep, who loved him true.

Those who disobey, they _scream_. They scream to realize that his love succoured, then smothered.

His russet-haired siren? Just a hollow creature now. His golden-tressed princess? Her bones creak and her throat rattles when the wind blows. The sprite who swore she was his alone, even as the king she served saw her banished for her betrayal? Sad and small and silent now.

He continues to sing to them, though they are past hearing. And his plaintive song, hanging upon the air, this is what brought you to the tower. Will you obey him? Will you love him? Look into his forest eyes, sink your fingers into those umber curls soft and sweet like the first blush of affection. Trace the bones of his strangely attractive face, like that of a wild saint long consigned to the hinterlands.

This beautiful guise, it has ensnared more than you will ever know. Dried blood destroys the nap of the soft velvet which caressed you as he drained you and it was all you ever wanted to know.

Will you climb the stairs up into his aerie to dwell among his dreams and longings? And the detritus of his failings?

Will you?


	4. Debauched Cherub

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heed my prior warnings, if you believe you need to.

Whenever he has occasion to view himself within a reflective surface, he never fails to sneer, baring his teeth in a parody of a smile. It is a comment upon what is expected of him. For his actual smile is glorious, it soothes the spirit and saves the world.

He’s a people person - charm is his ruling principle.

But when you are beyond beautiful - as he is - when you inhabit some other principality of attraction and cause unholy confusion in all you encounter, then you take some enjoyment in sneering and snarling and seething. 

He _knows_ he’s a monster. And he enjoys it, primarily. He embraces the role with the devotion he has shown it since his young human years. Now that he is immortal he appreciates that he can wield the illusion at will, dazzle and stun and stop the spin of ambition if only for a moment.

He carries a great deal of sharp-edged cynicism within him. It does not always complement his mood but when he looks down at what is left of his amusements then it reminds him that he _chose_ this, and he must _own_ this, and _use_ it because otherwise what has it all been for?

And so we look in upon an evening in which he is available to all comers. Unlike the lavishness of the Fop or the clutter of the Romantic, the Cherub has a cozy lair, there is plenty to delight within but also that which appeals to his particular sensibilities. 

Most of the rooms in his residence are actually closets. He is obsessed with fashion: from haute couture to handmade, trendy to timeless, antique to contemporary. And because it amuses him to do so he then finds the most outrageously appalling ways to combine seemingly contradictory pieces.

Many of the clothes come from his victims, whether they fit him or not. He often has them remade into something he can wear, and he muses upon their last owner, if he can recall who they were.

“I do so love to look through your new acquisitions, but why did they all have such bad taste?” his compatriot asks, flicking through a gaudy row of garments.

“You’re entirely too precious, luvie. They catch my eye with their desperate posturing, which they mistake for style.”

His compatriots believe he tries too hard, mostly. Attempting to live up to the infamy he has attained. They have eternity to do with as they wish, but an eternity of a good time sounds far too exhausting.

And **who** is having a good time here, you might wonder. Death avails itself of all vice because it can - these four will never suffer the cautionary tale of excess now.

This debauched cherub, he delights in the reactions he provokes. He toys with those whose gaze is stuck upon the radiant surface: the light of his smile, the shine of his eyes (like falling into the sky), the rapture he can cause with just the suggestion of a pout.

They missed the sneer, you see. They were too busy sighing over spun gold upon their fingertips.

_Fool’s gold all._

He is particularly fiendish in his determination to lay the trap. You are willing, you have always been willing, even before he caught sight of you. You were moving through your unexceptional life and heard rumors of an angel, traveling as they do upon the lips of the fervent. When the evidence was presented your life suddenly lost all meaning.

And then, having paid for the privilege of viewing him in the pantomime, especially resplendent in that ridiculous ensemble -

(Want to know a secret? He actually _loves it_ because he knows no one would be able to take their eyes off him when he makes his entrance.)

\- you are enraptured by his perfection, for it is all things: innocent and depraved and vulnerable and unassailable and virtuous and dangerous.

He is a doll, a doll that you may play with at your pleasure - imagine him however you like. 

(Unbeknownst to anyone, he allows this. It makes things easier, you see.)

You have concocted all the possible futures for him, all the possible ways in which you will meet and he will understand that you are the end to all his searching.

 **Then** he has you.

Not in actuality, not yet, but your imagination is his and he can caper about within wearing all his guises for you.

All the things which have been stated about him, they are not _real_ , but they are _true_.

His appetite is perhaps the most pernicious because he is hungry most often. He has no regard for what stares back at him in the mirror. His only concern is what **you** see.

Do you see what you want to see? Good.

At this point you are well aware of what he is and what he wants. And you are willing. You proclaim this willingness to all who will listen.

But you don’t know. Oh, how I dread telling you.

You just don’t know. You _can’t_ know.

He will rend you. Now, at first it will feel good to be fucked because he is skilled at satisfaction. He fills you in a way you didn’t imagine possible. It’s just not _your_ pleasure he is seeking.

He won’t take so much blood, just enough to get by. That’s not what he wants, not at all.

He’s not lusty, he’s not loving, he is _hungry_ for your abasement. Your entirely willing abasement. You mistake this for libido.

When you begin to cry, that’s when he knows.

And you won’t even know why you’re crying. Because the bliss departed too soon? Because he looked so utterly beautiful on the brink of expending himself within you? Because he broke you (even as you had been broken before, so so many times) wider than you ever could have imagined and part of you even liked it? Just as part of you was mortified at how easy it was? 

Because this is not about _you_ , not about you at all?

His face is the lure, his cock is the hook. His eyes, those eyes of an unclouded day full of possibility, are the weapon.

How? How can his gaze take something _out_ of you? And what is it? It hurts. In its’ absence you feel...numb, but you are in pain? How is that possible?

The dispassionate expression upon that sublime face as he climbs off of you, it’s just as blank as your soul right now.

It’s so much worse when he _smiles_ at you again as he dresses. Luminous like the light of Heaven. 

Too bad you’ll never see it.


	5. An absent friend

Some tended to _think_ he was uncomplicated.

Some tended to _believe_ that old adage regarding still waters running deep.

Both of these things are _true_.

 

He wanders the quarters of the city just before dawn. He recalls what his compatriot has told him about the Zodiacal Light, that great shaft piercing the horizon which had confounded all beings for centuries, seeming to herald the appearance or departure of the Sun before its’ appointed hour. He has never seen it and believes the other foolish for chasing a myth, all his data and calculations to the contrary.

But he was never one to quest for the unobtainable.

He is as cold and calculating as you suspect he might be, and more important to remember, he is _thirsty_.

 

You’ll never see him coming.

 

There is a story which is told about him, and it may only be a fiction but it is fascinating to consider whatever scrap of veracity it might contain.

In both their human and immortal lives those four were never wanting for amusement and celebration, and in a place inhabited by fellow charmed creatures he had vowed he would dance with every damsel in the place. But not because he had to _beg_ for a turn.

They would see what he was capable of, and they would desire to know it for themselves.

Who can resist a being who makes the rhythm of avidity his own?

In point of fact he generally does not speak. His actions are communicative far beyond whatever he would care to expend in pithy palaver. His compatriots are long-accustomed to his silences which may not signify assent, but only that they bore him silly and he has nothing to tell them which will stop them from continuing to be tedious and petty.

Even in death they are all _ludicrous_ and ain’t that a kick in the pants?

Oh, the story? Apologies for the tangent, my dears.

Yes, it is said he did dance with every fair creature in the place, a place which was renowned for luring them forth for the pleasures of Immortals. He was tireless and he was graceful and he was _mysterious_.

This is how he captures them, you see. Because with such a template you can believe what you want to believe. He is all your own, whatever you may see, whatever you may _believe_.

And **then** …

You really want to know? You might regret that decision.

As I say, he is _thirsty_. So let us have a peek at his workshop, where we find him tirelessly fiddling with bits and bobs, trinkets and trifles, attempting to coax usefulness out of that which this city has discarded and discounted.

He knows very well what it’s like to be discounted.

And he will quietly and efficiently set about to prove the fallacy of that assumption.

 

He hums as he traces the path of current through wires and capacitors and circuits and diodes and tubes. All possibility existing at that point in space, he can feel the insistence of it. But he need not fear its’ bite ever again. He has watched sparks dance upon his fingertips, become hooked on the buzz as it seeks the potential within his ensorcelled anatomy.

Demon-haunted as he is, the creature within him laughs and sometimes an immortal can hear their inhabitant if they are focused and unafraid. A frequency generally beyond the apprehension of both the living and the dead, but constantly occupying what is beneath the _trompe d’oeil_ of this world’s concerns and distractions.

As he listens to dead words sung to dead melodies and hums an echo of their longing, we can then begin to hear something else underneath it all. A rustle of struggle, a whisper of whimpering.

If you allow your eyes to examine this dimly-lit subterranean chamber, to look around and face your fear of such places, eventually you will see into the shadows. There are objects which have been suspended but are difficult to make out. There are candles everywhere but they do not illuminate all which you desire and dread to see.

 

His interests are primarily academic and he studies _kinbaku_ for years before making his foray into actual practice.

 

Some of those trussed up tight, they are in genuine distress. After a time he may release them because it does no good to frighten a victim, their flavor will be too harsh for his palate. He is thirsty but he is also _discerning_.

Some of them pretend to show fear because they believe it is part of the tableau. They confuse his participation in the pantomime with his actual desire to engage in artifice. On his own time he has no use for it. But because they are unafraid he allows them to stay.

Some of them have been on these ropes before and they are quiet. They are patient. But they are unaware of the depth of his thirst and so even in the surety of surrender may yet know a trickle of uncertainty moving agonizingly slow, inch by prickling inch.

 

As he works he casts a glance towards those exquisitely woven and knotted forms swaying gently in the shadows. He smiles in the knowledge of his acquisitions. He has heard the whispers regarding the predilections of his compatriots, their foibles and follies and fripperies. They are all so ridiculous, each in a particular way. But very rarely does anyone know just what **he** is up to, just what he is seeking during his pre-dawn prowling. 

Those who _think_ they know, they might be waiting to meet him. And because he is _thirsty_ , he will lead them to the terminus.

Those who have been rejected, they return to the waking world with no memory of having ever seen him.

He was never there. And when he is _here_ , as you can see, it’s difficult to comprehend the meaning of what we see.

He steps into the shadows then, to free one of his guests. There are a few noises which echo against the walls and the floor: a _snap_ , _crack_ , _crunch_ , _splat_ , _slurp_ , _thud_. And a _creak_ which carries on throughout.

Then a contented _sigh_. And the ritual continues on several more times, as dead voices warble a drifting static-y lullaby to us all.

You begin to realize just how wide and how deep this chamber is. So particularly well-designed, in fact.

Now what else would you expect such a thoroughly pragmatic being to do, after all, when he is so very _thirsty_.

What indeed? It is far more complicated than you had chosen to _believe_.


	6. Once he was an errant knight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer:** all resemblances to songs real or imagined contained herein are coincidental and the actual result of the author’s imagination and not that of a certain guitar-playing astrophysicist or any other hopeless romantic.

_Now I sing to you, all you maidens fair_  
_Warn you against wearing roses in your hair._  
_Warn you against the lover most wild_  
_Who shall find you in his glade_  
_And inquire,_  
_“Who gave you leave to pluck thine rose, my lady?”_

Ah, that is an old song, my dears. Forgive my taste, I prefer the classics. Those dead words and dead melodies, just as I love those from before those four were immortal. When they were still grasping and covetous. What fire they had then! How beautiful those boys in their satin skins!

But the Romantic, he has his own ballads in which he debases himself to that distant ideal.

_My queen, I shall not dream of thee_  
_far past the fire of stars long lost to thee._  
_Though my heart I have given thee_  
_grant me but even one glance from thee._  
_We cannot love, we shall not love_  
_until the Earth has died anon_  
_and only the void is left to thee._

It’s grim stuff, I find, and yet so very seductive in a arduous sort of way, yes? I knew you’d understand - it’s why you’re here, after all.

Me? Oh yes, I’ve heard him upon the evenings. And I lock the door and shut my ears against it. But I’m ancient, positively ancient, and my wisdom is hard-won, darlings. All your longings to ascend the throne which he has portrayed, to inhabit the dream of his abiding adoration, I have felt it to my cold dead core.

We are all stardust, it is said.

Has he taken from me? Ah, I wasn’t planning to confess such a private thing, but yes, my blood has passed his lips, and given that flush to his skin, shine to his eyes. Oh those eyes, the depths in which I long to submerge...

(I dream of a forest, and I venture so far and wide and his voice urges me on.)

They drink to us, they drink _of_ us, and we applaud their gluttony. Why? Why indeed, because we are their _food_ , my darlings. You will understand this better once you have attended the pantomime.

Oh you maidens fair - you there in your darling tiara, a princess, you say? And you, my lady, a queen I see. And how do you find our city? My apologies if I spoke too boldly, dear lady, I’ve heard there is a high price for offending you. Oh yes, your reputation is known locally for certain.

And you are all here to view the pantomime. All you royalty and near-royalty and imagined secret exalted ones. From the worlds in which you win, from the lands in which you rule, from the places in which you are nothing if not _special_. I welcome you all!

This city, it holds multitudes, but most are not special at all. That matters not when we have our Immortals to distract our imaginations. To haunt our dreams.

Tell you of the pantomime? But then there will be no surprises! Oh well...if you insist.

As you are all here for one particular reason, I shall tell you this much.

_Death bears a single rose, for one drop of blood_  
_It falls upon his lips_  
_Only the slightest taste remains._  
_But it is a century of sustenance_  
_And an eternity of devotion._

That is another old song, from the age in which a knight properly surrendered to his queen, to live and die upon her mercy and her rule. For he was ennobled by the prize of her regard. And the one who portrays Death in the pantomime - the one we came to see - he stands before the crowd and rips out his heart for our delectation. Oh the tears, like you have never seen, and he drinks them all with gratitude.

_If there was just one heart_  
_which I could break_  
_it would be my own._  
_Just one choice that I could make_  
_to stand here all alone._  
_But I’ve been at these crossroads before_  
_never meaning to, yet walking through_  
_another open door._

When the rabble has descended and the revelry begins, Death retreats into the shadows and our Grand Diva takes center stage, singing of the game of Love, the pain of Love, the agony and the ecstasy of Love. All around him is pleasure and excess and debauchery. It is a kind of madness in which one is unsure of the true nature of those pursuits. The Cherub and the Enigma enter, talking amongst themselves, apart from the crowd.

The Cherub is as always beautiful and precious and the consummate Brat Prince in his finery.

The Enigma, in a commentary upon his own personality, is depicted as a mythical creature.

Death emerges once more to render his judgment against all this indulgence. He is, characteristically, scornful of anything which does not involve self-flagellation.

Oh you laugh? No I assure you, it’s true. When you behold him torturing himself for your applause, you’ll understand. You’ll give him your tears so willingly and ache to tear out your own heart and tie it with a bow.

_Whatever eases your pain, my liege_  
_whatever soothes your soul, my lord._  
_Kisses upon your brow, my dear_  
_and the most secret parts_  
_of all my heart and soul and desire_  
_I have opened to you, my love._

I wrote that for him, he might have kept it. He saves _everything_ , you know. That tower of his is positively crammed with a lifetime of obsession, both his own and of those who _believe_ they love him.

_Take me, take me_  
_I can’t face this wasteland alone._  
_Take me, take me_  
_I am naked and far from any shore._


	7. “Stop sniveling!” (Eternity is not for the weak)

Becoming monstrous, it doesn’t mean the human concerns are abandoned. They crouch lower, and swim up when the tide is high, but they abide within the cold climes of the immortals.

There was nothing left to fight about, but fight they did all the same. They fought especially about their past lives. They did this out of earshot of the city but I am _everywhere_ , dear reader, and you are with me.

(Are **we** in the pantomime, you wonder? Perhaps we are.)

They reminisce, and recollections don’t match up. None of them remembers a thing the same as any of the others, and they _all_ believe they are correct. There is often laughter, and mocking which does not sting, does not seek to wound...but there is also darker discourse.

Fitting, you see, for the monsters they have become.

Two had been traveling that direction for all of their lives and thus did not regret, did not waver to enjoy the spoils of being immortal. Two were ambivalent, understanding there was no other way to meet their ambition, and they dealt with this development in different ways.

I know you wonder how long the city can continue to sustain them in their immortal state, how many bodies to pay the toll, and the answer is there are _always_ more. Theirs is a legend so compelling, designed to mutate from generation to generation to appeal to all who set eyes upon them and are ensnared by the call of empathy and felicity to hear their dead songs.

They speak to one another without speaking, but they also whisper and shout, purr and growl, in tones measured and sensible, choked with anger, brimming with tears.

“Come my darling,” the Diva says to the Cherub, “Come dine with me, I have picked some lovelies just for you. I want to watch how you do it.”

The Cherub is ever amenable to flesh, but resents his dear Diva’s intrusiveness. A incubus is in himself his own will, his own desire. The skill cannot be taught, only realized within the self. He is the only one who uses this power of theirs to the fullest.

“You can’t _learn_ ,” the other snaps, “you can only do or not do. And you have no patience to go that deep.”

“As if it’s some esoteric ritual!”

“ _Of course_ it isn’t. But neither is it instinctual. You have to _practice_ being just that cruel.”

He adores drama, the Diva does, but in life he was generally avoidant. The Cherub can see him biting his luscious lip, amber gaze glowing with pique.

“Oh...you don’t _believe_ I can do it, then?”

“Frankly no - the moment you’re pegged then you’re _fucked_.”

The pun lands as he thought it might and they cackle with delight.

 

He enjoys keeping this Good Man around: rakish, mustachioed and muscled, well-hung, capable hands and a sense of pride which fought, in ever-increasingly decreasing increments, to hold his own against the gravity well of the Diva’s demands.

Some do not surrender so well, even as they are aware it is inevitable.

_Does **your** food fight back at the end of your fork?_

But entranced as he was by incubi sorcery and the allure of the demon’s energy, the Good Man was made to view many a sordid scene and he wept when traversing the streets at dawn to consider not his ultimate fate, but those who would be dispatched so much sooner.

Or worse.

He shuddered at the thought of what the Cherub could do. One saw such wretched souls in the aftermath; they might recall the shape and texture of their lives, but their eyes - there was something _missing_ to look into the eyes of someone who had served as a true meal for those demons.

“I’m a monster, but I have a _heart_ , darling,” his Diva told him.

 _Liar._ All lies. Monsters are real, and they **will** eat you. No portion of mercy lies within that dead ensorcelled flesh, only the constant intrusive thoughts of _more more more_ and _mine mine mine_.

But the possession, it was amazingly pleasurable. To be allowed to sink balls deep into such a infernally divine creature, spurred on by their lust which rose up and burned down the illusions all around them. To fuck until one lost the sense of self, serving as an engine of satisfaction - but there was no ultimate transcendence, only the moment when the blood was tasted, or drunk, however long that might last. It could feel delightful, but it could also burn like the cold grip of the harshest heights. And if one survived, later they felt as if they had been carried a distance by some eldritch force, then discarded in an abandoned place to wonder how they might find their way back to the world they knew.

An existential hangover, one might say.

Yet it was all he _wanted_ to know - the beauty and the desire and the liquid heat of their coupling. Even if he was also humiliated by the presence of rival suitors, of being made to watch his Diva being serviced by others, or participating in a tableaux of perversity with that damned debauched Cherub.

Those two, they were twin imps of obscenity. Meant to spangle the heavens with their beautiful bastardry.

 _Monsters do **not** love_, he reminded himself, _no matter what they may tell you._

No matter that **you** may love them, so very very much.

 

“Promiscuity has _always_ been our ruin,” the Romantic laments.

They’ve spent hours drinking and picking at each other - not that alcohol has any effect on them anymore, but it’s a habit they take comfort in. And somehow it’s easier to do the one with the other.

“ **Nothing** ruined me,” the Diva retorts. “I regret _nothing_.”

“I don’t mean _sex_ , I mean love. You can’t deny you loved too many not worth your regard.”

“Can we exchange him for some _other_ beast do you think?” the Cherub asks the Enigma, who shrugs and smirks and takes another drink. Although this particular thirst has deserted him it is still an enjoyable behavior.

“I was adored as I should be, and I still am.”

“ _Emotionally_ you were manipulated and used -”

“No that was just you, ninny,” the Cherub says, and the withering glance he receives in response makes him smile. 

“Why don’t you two just fuck already?” the Enigma says, his voice barely above a murmur.

“Can you imagine?” the Diva exclaims. “They would flay each other alive.”

“Oh yes, I can see him curdling inside just to think of it,” the Cherub declares. “He’s afraid of me.”

“Afraid of what you’ve become, and with good reason!”

He comes up on the other, hands on those bony shoulders, feels a psychic push but expends his will to command his compatriot to sit still. He can smell the revulsion and it arouses him like nothing else he’s felt since becoming a monster.

“If I wanted to, I could make you beg to do my bidding and abase yourself in front of all those driveling maidens who come to cry over your caterwauling, you abject excuse for a demon.”

Oh how our Knight trembles at this threat! Has he truly forgotten the mettle of his own monstrosity?! But then again, his impassioned sensitive outpourings are what make us treasure him, despite the guise of Death he dons to lead us all in the danse macabre.

He gulps, his anger surfaces, and it is potent, causing the Cherub to shiver with delight once more.

“You well know now, as you’ve known at any time, what can happen when you push me too far.”

The Cherub pretends he has never transgressed in that fashion. When you have the knowledge of someone for _nearly_ an eternity, you can balance on the back of that relationship and its’ caprices.

“Enough! You’re boring me, the both of you,” the Diva announces.

“Whatever shall we do then?” the Cherub asks, although his answer to such inquires is always the same.

The Enigma takes his leave then, his actual thirst having demanded a search for newer vintages. The Romantic is soon to follow, eager to perch upon a gargoyle and serenade those who would hang upon his every utterance. One of them may prove to be his muse, and destiny calls...

The Diva and the Cherub are left to grin and plot an evening’s amusement, trawling the flesh pots for delicious prey and isn’t it such a wondrous thing to get exactly what you want?

Oh my pretties, let us consider that for a time, shall we? It is a ponderous question to be sure.


	8. What is mine is yours is ours

Imagine, if you will, having to spend eternity with those you’ve known too long to truly love. But who else could stand the sight of you, after all?

The _true_ sight of you, that is. The swine beneath the skin.

But then again, the stories in the pantomime, they’re only what they _want you_ to see. And so I’ve come to lead you to a bedroom or two, if you dare.

If you care. (Ah but that’s the thing, isn’t it? You **do** care, until you learn the truth.) 

 

He doesn’t sleep with them. The Romantic keeps watch over them, stares at them, imagines a whole other life with each of them. This is his way - he lives in his head, and in his imagination there is always someone who loves him with the fervor of one who can never possess him.

There is no owning him now, there is no controlling him now - their worst habits run riot in this city and we are sometimes touched by those obsessions.

So he doesn’t have a bed as such and he is caught between the windows of the tower, wide and high, and her sleeping face, this maiden who is like all the other maidens. And he wonders if she is the one.

(Nothing happens for a very long time. But I could watch him for days like this, his torture is _fascinating_.)

The Cherub, he fades into the scene. The shadows retreat, and he is revealed in a corner. He might have been there all along. Those eyes like the sight of water meeting sky, and where does it end? There is no end. Like his hunger, there is no end to his enticement.

“What is it about this one?” he inquires. “She’s just a mouse.”

“It’s the taste of her,” his compatriot murmurs. “It reminds me of the wine I drank with the Siren in our secret abode, the night of the honeyed moon and I sang to shame her own talents and she swore she loved me.”

“You _ruined_ her,” the Cherub snarls. “And for **what**?!”

(Want to know a secret? The long-simmering rage of their ugly rivalry, this was not portrayed, this was not known, but it is a thing both _real_ and _true_. They would rather the city believe they stand virtuous in their bond. Oh no no no, my pretties - the worst of what they are is what keeps them shackled. You’ll see.)

“I loved her!” the Romantic shouts. Unused as he is to shouting, to showing anger even as it pools inside of him, fathomless in the way all little boys hoard their betrayal. “I love her still.”

“She is non-existent now, you fool. Once a fool, always a fool, always listening to the liars in your head.”

“What do you _want_?”

This question is rhetorical. And we shall answer it anon, I promise.

 

 

In his chamber, the Diva crouches atop a beautiful boy, lithe and lean, laid upon his dark sheets which bring the creaminess of that rough silken skin into focus, and he does not mean to dominate or possess, but when the city troubles him and his emotions turn to writhing hissing things squirming beneath even the monstrous detachment granted by immortality, he is soothed by contact, by possession. A heartbeat. And then the memory of one.

 _Mine_. To do with as I please. To love, to fuck, to devour.

Beauty does not always grant peace to a covetous nature. It is more often responsible for madness, for pricking the insecurities which riddle a being like worm-rot. He had a veneer, hard as polymer, years and layers of self-determination hardening, hiding the shame and confusion and finally the vanity.

The world is dropped into your lap...what would **you** do?

Everything with everyone?

And now - soulless, ancient, frozen - he still regrets nothing though his treacherous emotions sting him so. The Cherub appears with tales and gossip and treats and gets him to laugh for a while. They look into the glass together and the other is solicitous, even gentle with his appreciation of that legendary allure. But when dawn is ringing the changes, and black oblivion awaits...the Diva sighs and looks at the body he has broken.

To _feel_ , that was always his weakness.

He thought immortality would cure that particular malaise.

 

“Who never loved you enough? Everyone! You sucked them all dry, like so many snails, their shells empty upon the ground, their bodies sacrificed to your self-loathing bellyache. ‘You love me, don’t you? Tell me you love me! Tell me I’m the one you really want!’ And when they had nothing left to give then you cried, you demanded their very bones to gnaw upon!” 

_tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me_

**STOP!**

The Cherub smiles, oh he is thoroughly satisfied. He has fed as he needs to but seeing that his nemesis is exhausted, he moves in. He slithers forth from the shadows until they are entwined.

He takes, with his kiss, with his cock, he **is** that cruel. And the other too agonized to refuse, though he never did, he never has. The Romantic pours acid into his dead heart and wails at the memory of pain.

“Who never loved you enough? Me. Say it!”

“You. It was all your fault.”

Wicked low laughter - how it would arouse in any other, especially those caught in the Cherub’s gold-and-azure web. But our Knight, he weeps. He returns those kisses, those caresses, but he weeps for how he wasted his life in service to the wickedness they brought with them to Eternity.

 

The Enigma is not tortured by their bargain, though he does wonder why it was necessary. Surely the city can live on without them, without their presence seeding the dreams of so many. Without the ritual of the pantomime provoking laughter and tears and sucking the life out of those devotees who have come to witness it numerous times. How they weep, how they scream.

_Fill me, thrill me, kill me. Make me feel, make it real._

He had a crisis once. He traveled to a distant island - an island he had paid for because he was just that wealthy at the time - and he tried to unwash his brain. Listened to nothing but water and wind and wildlife. Slept on the beach, sat in the surf, spoke to no one for seven days. Ate what they had provided for him, drank from a stream, swam in a waterfall. Allowed the sun to burn him and the wind to scour him. He tried to see if he could purge that beast who was so very _thirsty_ , even in life.

On the eighth day he began to suspect that whatever had come before all this was a dream, and _this_ was what he was meant to wake up to. He could return and then retreat but he also knew what that would do to everyone else. They didn’t belong to themselves anymore, and they belonged to each other worst of all.

He drinks from the hearts of those who say they love him -

_“How could you possibly even know of me?” he asks each one just before the heart is ripped from the chest_

\- and he keeps his distance, keeps his mystery. Keeps attempting to empty his mind. But they’re in there - his compatriots - like so many trilobites in the shale, trapped in an existence they had no idea would be so closely studied by others in some distant aeon.


	9. Once upon a time we were everything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The usual disclaimers apply here as well.

“We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Confused and drenched in someone else’s blood? Oh no? That’s just us? Well let me tell you about it, my dears!”

The Diva enjoys the small shock as well as the big impression, his quips and jibes provoking laughter and wide-eyed disbelief, but then the scene changes, the next song rolls along, and we are all swept away by the fairy tale once again.

_See what I got_  
_I’m everything you’re not._  
_Tell me what you feel_  
_am I real, am I real?!_

The heroic poses, the comedic posturing, the thunder of amplification, the voice of the audience rising and falling in waves of singing, cheering, screaming, raucous joy and intense delirium. Comedy, tragedy...and triumph in the end. Join in, we are all everything we say we are. Yes, you too my darlings.

_All we hear is_  
_curdled gobbledygook_  
_the same old nonsense._

And do you carry that feeling home with you when the lights come up and the doors open once more? Of course you do. You curl up in your little nest and you dream of them, and they are there inside of you. They really truly are, they feast upon the manna of your imaginings. They pick through your fantasies and chew on the really interesting ones. As they donned so many costumes and guises in the pantomime, so now do they dress themselves in your dreams and take you in hand. You close your eyes and fall into an embrace snug and seductive.

Strange how you can still feel it in the waking world, like an iron band around your brain. Everywhere you turn, there they are.

_I’m an assassin, no one deadlier._  
_But this murderer, yeah you mighta heard_  
_babe, I like to stick it!_  
_Arousal and panic, emotions blurred._  
_Come back stunner, won’t stand for no other_  
_I’m a goon for your love!_

Replicating, the song in your blood, auditory mass hysteria.

Suddenly, there they are: archetypes of violence and madness and you are thrilled to glimpse something seemingly forbidden. It is a heavy secret and its’ weight is titillating. They are not those you dream up and yet they fit the role as if born to it.

The truth is closer than you know. It is all around you.

They have warred and they have slashed and scarred and stabbed deep. Each is the others’ favorite victims, especially after all the peripheral casualties have crawled away. But for them there is no leaving, no ending. There is only forever.

_All you do is howl_  
_all I do is growl._  
_Why can’t we stop pretending_  
_and just let it all collapse._

So these dark imaginings of yours, the bloody fantasies, the erotically deranged spectacles...they are not so inceptive. But as long as others imbue them with their belief and their eagerness, then they are alive within those skins and they can feed just as well as they do from the oceans of treacle-y benevolence which many seek to drown them in. To preserve them like so much ripe fruit. These ruts in the road you’re walking upon now, look closer at them, and you’ll see what all the travelers have left behind.

Mind what **you** are trailing in your rush to clutch their glory.

Make a world, make it your own, fix what is twisted and stunted and corrupted. Make them as you will within it. But be careful, when they find the path to your dreams, they will take what **they** want. And you can’t even imagine what that is.

_I lie in wait with an open mind_  
_I carry on through a distant battle cry_  
_I follow every path_  
_my kingdom for a map_  
_but each time I am a little less bold._

And this is now the time where you all turn on me, to demand that I tell the truth. But **I am** , don’t you see? I showed you the place inside me where they have hollowed me out, and I keep my own desires for them there, they taunt me before I wake - I look out the window and see them retreating with the dawn, and they make mocking faces at me. We have a complicated relationship.

I am always in the audience at the pantomime. To relive the fairy tale of their origin myth and its’ precious potential, the beautiful fantasy of what they were. I don’t want to step back into that dead world, but I look at the shards from my scrying mirror and I want their charmed selves to be released to me, to all of us, so that we might know the pleasure of that fable, of all the glorious creatures within it.

So very dear, even if they **do** bite. See what they have wrought upon me for my fancies?

_Oooh, what will you think of Heaven if it’s Hell that can’t be tamed?_


End file.
